My Innermost Thoughts - Part V: Are we a generation with a lost cause? Probably not..

Our great grandpas and great grandmas would have been happy to hear this if they were still alive. Happy that we are lucky enough to live in a period which can safely be claimed as the most peaceful in recent times. What they would obviously miss to see is that, this is also the dullest in recent times. Now you might think ‘Well that’s not a bad thing, eh?’. It certainly isn’t. We are just talking about mundane work, routines which tend to take the word dull to new found levels and a life whose only purpose seems to be “to live through”!

As pragmatic a thought that it may be, it still leaves you with a sense of emptiness. It leaves you with a feeling of having missed out on something big and having lost that opportunity to be part of something grand and something which probably changed the world. That would make a story worth telling to your grand kids, wouldn’t it? Now just because I want to live through a life full of action and world changing moments doesn’t mean that I am wishing for another World War or another Tsunami. No doubt the Tsunami was one heck of a moment in our lives which would qualify as one among the top 10 list of stories that I would like to share with my grand kids. But would this be all? Sharing stories of natural calamities and how people died in them? In case I have failed to make my point yet, here it goes. I wish to live through a time where something revolutionary happened. Things like ‘Civilization - Harappa and Mohenjodaro’, ‘Industrial Revoution’, ‘Modernization’ and many more such events in history that can be remembered even now with awe. May be I have got it all wrong! These were not moments in history but rather an evolutionary phase spread across centuries. So may be we are living through one such phase in history.

But which phase would that be? A post modernization phase? Or going by the recent trends, an Oil Depletion phase perhaps? The most appropriate one would seem to be a ‘Global Warming’ phase. A phase where the whole of civilization became so power hungry that they depleted all the Oil in the World, ate all the plants and animals, cut down all the trees, drank all the water, and duplicated enough to have more people per square foot of land than the other way round. Yeah, this is probably what we will be remembered for.

I remember one of the jokes that my friends shared with me, which I would like to share here:
One of his lecturers had this habit of exaggerating everything. One day, the lecturer came to the class and told everyone how he had heroically fought a python. After the lecturer stopped with his version of the story, one of the “back bench” boys came up with this quick reply to the Professor: (conversation reconstructed)

Quick witted Boy: ‘Sir, I have seen two snakes fight with each other”
Professor: ‘Oh is it! Good, share it with us then.
Quick witted Boy: ‘The two snakes started eating each other’s tails and in the end both of them vanished!’
Professor:

I was just thinking of those two virtual snakes and relating those to people. With the third World War almost definitely thought to be for resources, it wouldn’t be long before people start fighting each other for food, water and shelter and worst even; turning to Cannibals. This is probably what we will be remembered for…

Did you say a lost cause? Well, we can start by fighting Global Warming.. That sounds like a cause to me.

A video on Global Warming